Nike Retailers Are Bracing for Sneaker Riots

Nike's new $315 shoe, the Lebron X Nike Plus, may not come out until this fall but the shoemaker is already issuing safety directives to retailers to prevent riots. The Wall Street Journal's Shelly Banjo has obtained a new memo circulated to stores like Foot Locker and Dick's Sporting Goods that prohibit the much-hyped midnight releases that have resulted in stampedes followed by riot gear-garbed police. Stores will now have to debut the shoes at their regular 8 a.m. openings. But that's not all, per Banjo:

In a company memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Nike told retailers it will no longer allow stores to presell or take reservations for new shoes. Nike is also banning store chains from displaying photos or other descriptions of new products ahead of their launch dates.

At press time, it was unclear which fact better conveyed the decline of Western civilization: $315 sneakers or the issuance of safety measures for the release of those shoes. But if the release of Nike's Air Yeezy II sneaker is any measure, this should be a spectacle. That shoe only retailed for $245 but sold online for as much as $80,000. The goal here, of course, is to prevent the kind of disturbance that broke out in February when Foot Locker had to cancel the release of the $220 Nike Air Foamposite shoes "after more than 100 Orlando police in riot gear were sent to break up fights among a crowd that formed outside a Florida mall ahead of the sneakers' midnight launch," as the Journal reported. Here's hoping for better luck this time.

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